


Your Twisted Words, Your Help Just Hurts

by Feeling_Super_Super_Super



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/F, Panic Attacks, Trans Catra (She-Ra), Transphobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-13
Updated: 2020-07-16
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:41:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25249351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Feeling_Super_Super_Super/pseuds/Feeling_Super_Super_Super
Summary: Catra doesn't know what she wants, but Shadow Weaver, Adora and her own psyche all have some suggestions.
Relationships: Adora/Catra (She-Ra), Bow & Catra (She-Ra)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 63





	1. That She Couldn’t Help But Love Her For It

**Author's Note:**

> There is frequent misgendering/deadnaming of Catra in this fic, including by herself, and she deals with that as well as dysphoria and transphobia (not explicit but only pretty clearly coded), so stay safe if that's a thing that you have to watch out for.

Catra composed herself, wiping the tears away from her eyes and trying to still her shaking hands. She wouldn’t let Shadow Weaver see her like this, she’d already learned from that mistake.

“Cadet, status report on your training,” the older woman said, her expression cold, emotionless.

Catra fidgeted with a stray hair. “It’s going well, Shadow Weaver. I managed to catch two bots this morning, and I disposed of them both myself this time.” She looked up at her mentor with bated breath, waiting to see if she would receive praise or punishment this time.

“Good boy,” was the slithering, hissing reply, and Catra squirmed uncomfortably. “Keep up that progress, Cadet, and you’ll please me greatly.”

As the older woman slunk out of the room, Catra retreated as quickly as possibly to her bed – well, to her spot at the foot of Adora’s. They’d started sleeping like this – Catra nestled at Adora’s feet, head laying in her lap – a few months ago, and since then nobody had been able to separate them. If they did, Catra would mewl and yelp and scratch, and when she was forced to sleep in her own bed at the start of the night she would lie awake, either silently until everyone else was asleep and she could sneak into her best friend’s bed, or loudly thrashing and moaning until someone finally relented and let her move there.

She was there now, the little pillow Adora had placed there soaking up the hot tears she knew she couldn’t stave off any longer. She imagined Adora’s small, soft hands running down her back, flattening the tufts of her fur in comforting motions, and then she imagined Adora lying next to her, her lips on the other girl’s, softly kissing the pain away.

But that would never happen, because as Lonnie had so often warned about the boys in their squadron, their kisses were hard and messy and uncomfortable, and not soft like Catra knew Adora wanted. She cried harder, realising once again that Lonnie and Adora counted Catra in with Kyle and Rogelio: the boys, rough and hard, not what Adora deserved – not what Catra wanted desperately to be able to give her.

The tears were coming hot and heavy now, and Catra dreaded to think what would happen if one of the other members of her squadron came in. She hoped for Kyle or Rogelio: the latter would say nothing except his guttural grunts, allowing Catra the solace of ignorance, and the former could easily be threatened into submission. Lonnie, on the other hand, would be merciless, teasing her and calling her out for her pathetic attempt at being “soft”, how obsessed she was with that concept, according to her cries out in the middle of the night. “It’s not soft,” she heard Lonnie tell her, “it’s _weak._ And it’s _pathetic_.” That word rattled around inside her brain like a phantom, haunting her every thought. She snarled in the darkness, lips curled around bared fangs, spittle flying out and merging with the wetness of tears. I’ll show you weak, she thought hoarsely.

Adora would be worse, she reminded herself after a moment. Adora doesn’t know about this, or pretends not to, and you don’t want to give her a chance to find out. Better Lonnie’s biting critique than Adora’s genuine pity; if you had to face that, she thought, you would break.

So she struggled to pull herself upright, to a sitting position on the bed, knowing that Adora would be back from her (much more in-depth, personal) training soon. For the second time, she blinked away tears and did her best to dry her wet cheeks with her sleeve, put up the wall between what she felt and what she showed to the world that she had worked so hard to build. The wall that had only come down a handful of times, and never more than once around anybody other than Adora. The wall that protected her from the worst of the attacks that she knew were slung at her behind closed doors.

When Adora did come in, she was excited, vibrant, as she prepared to tell Catra all about her day. “Hey Tom,” she giggled, before realising her mistake with wide, apologetic eyes, and corrected herself, “Oh my god I’m so sorry – hey Catra.” Her bright demeanour was diminished, but Catra mimicked her giggle and said it’s okay, invited her to sit on the bed next to her, hoped she didn’t notice the stains on the pillow.

Adora hopped up next to her and held her hand, running her thumb over the other girl’s palm and speaking animatedly about the training session she just had. “Oh, it was so amazing, _Catra_!” she said, making a point of getting her name right this time. Catra knew that wasn’t something she should be praised for but it placed her so much higher than everyone else around her – who at best pretended her coming-out on the eve of her eleventh birthday never happened and at worst actively mocked her for such a _pathetic_ display of _weakness_ – that she couldn’t help but love her for it.

When Adora had finished telling Catra the story, and Catra had finished revelling in her best friend’s pure, unadulterated, infectious joy at the wonders of life, marvelling that she was so able to find beauty and fun and enjoyment in everything – when Adora had finished telling Catra the story, she moved around behind Catra, subtly nudged her onto her lap and wrapped her arms around her shoulders. Threading her fingers through Catra’s matted, barely combed locks, she leaned forward and whispered softly in her ear, “Your hair is really pretty.”

Catra’s breath hitched, as it always did when Adora used the forbidden word, _pretty_ , the word that held so many of Catra’s unknowable, impossible aspirations. Adora’s hot breath tickled her ear and she jolted away. “I like it long,” Adora continued, once again holding her hand.

“Shadow Weaver doesn’t want me to have it long,” she said in a small voice. “She thinks I should cut it short.”

Insistent, Adora shook her head – tossing it so that her ponytail fell over Catra’s shoulders – and repeated herself: “I like it long.”

Just that. Not what Shadow Weaver wanted or the Horde required or what would elevate her training. Just what Adora liked. In that moment, Catra felt like she would do anything as long as that was what Adora liked, and she leaned her head back, relishing in the thought that _Adora likes it long._

Adora threaded her hand through Catra’s hair, smoothing out some of the thicker knots, working methodically and soothingly, her other hand still intertwined in Catra’s. As she worked, Catra relaxed her muscles under her soothing touch that she began to purr, leaning into Adora’s body and letting the vibrations flow through them both.

“Do you want me to hug you?” Adora eventually asked, breaking the comforting connection between their bodies and sitting upright. “You don’t normally let me get this close unless you’re upset, so do you want a hug?”

Catra closed her eyes, pained at the sudden loss of contact, and shook her head tightly. “I’m not weak, I don’t need a hug,” she said, a little too fast.

Adora shifted a second time, leaning back and resting on her elbows. “You’re not weak,” she reassured Catra. “Not at all, you’re so incredibly strong. And… that’s not what I asked.” She glanced at Catra knowingly, and Catra melted a little more.

“Hordak said he didn’t want to see displays of affection between cadets,” she tried, meeker this time.

Adora gave Catra another little glance, this time with more pity. “That’s still not what I asked,” she replied, her voice soft. “What do _you_ want?”

Catra looked into Adora’s eyes, melting at her soft, caring expression, and said, “I want you to hug me.”

Adora moved towards her, rested her hands on her shoulders, brought Catra close to her chest. Catra tensed up for a moment, but relaxed as she began to massage her shoulder blades, working the stiffness out of her muscles from the day’s training. Still, the momentary sensation didn’t escape Adora’s notice, and she paused to ask Catra whether this was okay. She nodded, and buried her head into her best friend’s chest, wishing that her tears wouldn’t come back now but knowing that it wouldn’t matter if they did.


	2. Yeah, Almost

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The same warnings as part one apply for this one.   
> Reminder kids, always check with trans friends if it's okay to correctly name/gender them around people where it might be dangerous, especially in case of abuse or overt transphobia.

Catra strolled confidently into Shadow Weaver’s chamber after a single knock on the door. It was the eve of her sixteenth birthday, Adora had promised a surprise for her tonight, and tomorrow they were announcing which Cadets were to be accepted for the first official exercise of Force Captain training: a raid on a coastal town under the protection of the Kingdom of Salineas, for which Catra was assured to be a shoo-in.

Nothing could ruin her good mood this afternoon, she thought as she entered the dreaded inner sanctum, not even Shadow Weaver’s subtle put-downs and manipulations.

Then Shadow Weaver caught sight of her, and suddenly all that confidence evaporated. “Stand up straight, cadet, and please do something about that hair,” she hissed, and Catra stood to attention immediately, running a hand through her hair to flatten at least the unruliest curls. “You’re going to be sixteen tomorrow, my dear boy,” Shadow Weaver crooned, cupping Catra’s cheek. “We’ve given some… leniency to your choices of expression, but really they have to stop soon. I thought you would have grown out of it by now. Don’t you think you’re getting too old for such displays of… weakness?”

Catra opened her mouth to retort but found herself without anything to say, and closed it again.

Shadow Weaver continued, “We wouldn’t want this to get in the way of your training, would we? You’re a strong candidate for next week’s raid, as you know, but, looking at you, perhaps it would be better to send a cadet we can trust to be strong.”

Catra coughed, finding her voice at last. “I already am strong and you know it. I’m performing better in simulations than anyone else my age.”

Shadow Weaver retracted her hand, leaving only the tip of a fingernail on her chin, lifting her head. “Adora was doing better than you at two years younger,” she corrected sternly. “Don’t. Get. Cocky.”

Catra felt the fur on her arms straighten at the mention of Adora’s name, and a curse flew to her lips – whether at Shadow Weaver for tainting her friend’s name or at herself for being so vulnerable to it, she didn’t know. She bit back an insult and, silently seething, waited for Shadow Weaver to either speak again or dismiss her.

“One more thing, Thomas,” Shadow Weaver spoke, her tone as clipped as ever, and Catra blanched. The all too familiar hammering in her skull returned, and Catra struggled to hear the “one more thing” Shadow Weaver had to say, catching only fragments at a time. “… you and Adora together… calling you Catra… certainly do not approve… Lord Hordak has ordered… must stop immediately. Do you understand?”

As she zoned in again, Catra realised she could guess exactly what had been said: “Adora’s not allowed to call me Catra anymore?” she replied, her tone perfectly positioned to be framed as a question, but with enough confidence not to suggest uncertainty. It was likely enough that her superiors were trying to enforce this, again, that she wasn’t worried about having misheard her – and for that matter, nor was she worried about it being enforced, as that had been declared so many times and never really came to anything.

Her guess was confirmed a moment later when Shadow Weaver, nail still lifting Catra’s chin towards her, pulled her very close to the older woman’s face and hissed, “Precisely.” She kept going though, adding, “And if I hear any reports of insubordination from either of you, you will both be removed from consideration for this mission – even if it is after you get a place in the raid – and will be separated into different squadrons. A move, by the way, which should have been made much, much earlier.”

Catra realised with shock that she was serious this time, and wriggled out of her grasp as soon as the understanding hit her. With a second bite of shock, this time dosed in a healthy serving of shame, she had the resentful thought that _you shouldn’t get this emotional, Adora wouldn’t let herself be affected, don’t give Shadow Weaver more excuse to tell you how you’re_ weaker _than her._

She gave a hasty salute and hurried as calmly as she could. Almost without her noticing, her legs sped up beneath her and carried her to her familiar spot at the foot of Adora’s bed. Staring straight ahead, not even letting her eyes follow the movement of her hands, she rifled through Adora’s drawer, finally emerging victorious with a standard-issue pocket knife, Adora’s name carved down the side as a memento of a fidgety young nine-year-old who should never have been given access to multiple sharp objects at once.

She swung around to a mirror, and looked herself in the eye. “You’re an idiot, Tom,” she told herself out loud, glad that the room was empty. The name felt foreign in her mouth. “You’ve known you’d eventually have to cut it since you started growing it out, don’t be a pussy about it now.” She grabbed the longest section in her free hand, and with a vicious swing of the fist in which she held the knife she ripped through her locks, wincing in pain every time it passed through a knot. Hair fell to the ground and onto the bed all around her, and she was left with a large chunk tangling itself stubbornly around her claws.

She stared at it, expecting to feel some joy, some satisfaction at least, at the successful conquest of her own femininity – that’s what Shadow Weaver would have promised her, that’s what the Horde always taught its recruits. “Gain victory over yourself, and you will have mastery over all things.” Well, she’d done it, and all she felt was a strange sense of… grief. She had worked so hard to protect this side of herself, defend it from Hordak and Shadow Weaver and Lonnie, and now she had cut it away. Literally as well as figuratively, and one hurt as much as the other.

All at once the pain and hurt and sorrow came back to her, and she let out a strangled noise, halfway between a gasp and a cry, right as Adora came tumbling into the room.

“Catra? Are you okay, I heard a noise and it sounded like you and – oh my god, Catra, what have you done?” Adora sunk down in front of her on the bed as she spoke, looking down at the hair that covered the floor. w

Adora’s arrival tipped Catra over, and she began bawling into Adora’s willing arms. The words came tumbling out, interspersed with occasional hiccups and pauses to catch her breath: “Shadow Weaver told me to do something about my hair because it might threaten my chances at getting into the raid, a–and she said that you can’t call me Catra anymore or she’ll separate us so please call me Tom and treat me like a boy l-like you used to because I can’t lose you please I’d do anything not to lose you —”

She broke, finally, her words falling to hiccups and tears and gasps for breath. Adora held her for a while, stroking her – now painfully short – hair, then said, “Do you really want me to call you Tom again? I thought you hated that.”

Catra looked up. “I do, but she’s gonna take you away from me. I’d hate that more.”

Adora shook her head and laughed, her eyes twinkling in the relative dark of the room. “They can’t control what I call you in private, and they definitely can’t control what I think of you in my head. It’ll be fine, Catra! We’ll just be more careful and they won’t catch us.”

“It’s not that easy, Adora,” she responded, the weariness evident in her voice. “They’ve never cared about me before, but now we’re being picked for Force Captain, and these things matter. They’ve always needed me to keep you in line, but once you’re Force Captain and I’m still just a subordinate, I won’t be useful anymore. So we have to be serious about this.” She clasped Adora’s hands in her own, wrapping her claws around her best friend’s thumbs.

“What do you mean, once I’m Force Captain? We’re gonna be promoted together, remember?”

With a bitter laugh, she said, “Adora, don’t be naïve. They’re never gonna promote me, they don’t want anything to do with me. I’m only still here to keep you happy, they’ll dispose of me as soon as they can get away with it.”

Adora appeared to be at a loss for words, as though she’d never considered this before. Finally, with a resolute look in her eye, she responded, “Then I’ll make them keep you – at least that way we can be together.”

Catra rolled away, sitting up on her haunches. “I don’t want to just be here because you begged for me to be allowed to, I’m not your charity case,” she said, a little bit of anger creeping into her tone.

“Hey, it’s not like that! Think of it like… calling in a favour! I convince Shadow Weaver to promote you alongside me in exchange for me not refusing my promotion – and then the Horde gets its two best cadets as Force Captains, and we get to be together.”

“Oh my god, Adora,” Catra heard herself say, noting the hardness in her voice, and realised all at once that she was about to let loose all her anger, all her frustration, all her resentment at Shadow Weaver’s abuse and manipulation, on her best friend, right now. “I don’t want to be Force Captain just so you can get a kick out of using your influence, okay? You always have to play the saviour, constantly trying to _protect_ me from Shadow Weaver and Hordak and everyone, and I’m sick of it! I’m not fucking weak, I don’t want to cower behind you and have you cover for me because I’m not good enough to do it on my own. And I don’t want you to put us both in danger just so you can feel better about calling me by the right name. So just _back_ _off,_ okay?”

Adora held her hand up, as though she couldn’t decide whether to cover her mouth in shock or strike Catra, and she looked at Catra with an expression that just screamed _hurt_ , right into the inner recesses of Catra’s mind.

She stumbled back, suddenly fearful of her own words, as her mind threw thoughts at her faster than she could cope with them, sending her reeling back against the bedframe, heart pounding loudly in her head: _you ruined it she hates you you deserve it you deserve to feel as bad as her she’s never gonna look at you again you ruined it you ruined it_ you ruined it YOU RUINED IT _!_

When the pounding subsided, Adora looked at Catra, who had curled in on herself on the mattress, and said, “Catra, I didn’t mean it like that. You were the one who said they wouldn’t accept you for promotion, not me. And I don’t even think that’s right, everyone knows you’re almost as strong as me.”

Catra looked up at Adora at that last comment, her ears pricking up. She narrowed her eyes as the words filtered through her still-foggy brain, and swung herself up from the bed, getting ready to find a broom and clear up the hair. “Yeah,” she said as she stalked past Adora, not looking directly at her. “Almost.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I haven't decided whether or not to continue this - I think I'll probably wait and see if inspiration hits for something thematically appropriate before I get another idea. If not, I'll leave this one as a two shot I guess


	3. To Include You In Mine

The rest of the former Horde Soldiers who had defected during the final battle, led by Lonnie, Kyle and Scorpia, had dispersed, organising themselves into teams throughout the Fright Zone to take it apart, incinerating and destroying as much paraphernalia as they could in preparation for Scorpia to set up her new kingdom.

The only rooms that they hadn’t touched yet were Entrapta and Hordak’s former laboratory, where Entrapta had spent most of the last week holed up with some of the Horde clones investigating how their hive mind worked, and Shadow Weaver’s former ‘inner sanctum’, which Catra had requested be left for herself to deal with.

So here she was, standing in front of that door for hopefully the last time, with only Bow by her side. “You sure you’re ready?” he asked her, courteous as always.

She gave a firm nod, and replied, “Never gonna get any readier,” and together they pushed open the door. She had taken to using this room as a strategy centre during the late phase of her war against the princesses, before the arrival of Horde Prime, but she only really knew her way around the sections of Shadow Weaver’s meticulous filing system that were necessary for planning attacks. The management of the Fright Zone itself she had had Scorpia delegate to some junior officer, and she mostly left regional issues to the commander of whichever base was closest. Thus, she was no more acquainted with the majority of what was in these filing cabinets than Bow.

They worked diligently for a few hours, skirting awkwardly around what remained of the Black Garnet, which had partially been destroyed when the worldwide restoration of magic hit the Fright Zone and caused major infrastructural damage; neither of them needed to say much more than a short request to pass the other a file until Bow came across a drawer in the “dormitory layout” section.

“Hey, Catra? I thought Adora shared a room with you and three other people…” he began, before Catra realised what he was about to ask and scampered over to him.

“Put that back,” she said hurriedly, trying to grab the piece of paper he had just pulled out of the drawer away from him. “I’ll deal with it in a second, I promise. Just let me finish —”

“Hey, not so fast!” Bow interrupted, playfully peering over Catra to read the paper. “I’ve heard of the other three, but who’s Thomas?”

Catra looked down and scowled despite herself. “Really, she couldn’t have put Tom? Nobody ever used fucking _Thomas_ apart from Shadow Weaver. Here, do you have a pen?” Spying one on the countertop above them, she grabbed it and crossed out the ‘h’ and the ‘as’. Then, realising who was with her, she looked nervously up at Bow, who had a confused look on his face.

With a resigned sigh, she stood up and dusted herself off, then knelt down to face Bow. “Okay, look. There are six people outside of this room who know the information I’m about to tell you. And of those, Shadow Weaver is dead, Hordak has had like five mind wipes since he last spared a thought for Tom, Adora would be willing to duel someone to the death before she’d tell them this, and I don’t think Rogelio or Kyle have ever communicated intelligibly to anyone other than each other.”

Bow, who had been counting on his hands as he frantically tried to follow her words, pointed a finger when she was finished, and said, “That’s only five. I think.”

“Yeah, well we’re just gonna have to trust Lonnie,” she deadpanned, feeling the barest poke of a fang in her lower gum. “Anyway, what I was saying is this is absolutely secret, and if you tell _anyone_ I will personally rip up every one of your arrows and feed them to Melog.”

Bow didn’t respond, appearing to be lost in thought. Then, after a moment, he said, “When I was thirteen, I thought it would be a good idea to dye my hair red – like, proper, tomato-coloured, red. And this was right before an important dinner where I was gonna accompany Glimmer as her plus one. So Glimmer walks in about an hour before we’re supposed to leave, and she goes, ‘Bow, what the fuck?’ I’m completely oblivious, and it’s not until she thrusts a mirror in front of me that I realise how completely awful it looks. She had to shave my head until it was nearly bald, and I ended up wearing a cap for about a month to hide it from Queen Angella.”

Catra imagined Bow with bright red hair, and then with no hair at all, and couldn’t help bursting into laughter. “Why the hell would you tell me that?” she asked, tears in her eyes. “You’ve just given me _so_ much teasing material there.”

Shrugging, Bow replied, “Now you’ve got something of mine to hold against me, so hopefully you’ll feel a bit more comfortable sharing something of yours. Glimmer took pictures before and shaving me, by the way, in case you want proof. I’m sure she’d be happy to giggle at them with you.”

“I just might take you up on that offer,” Catra mused, then pushed herself off the ground to start looking for the file she needed.

“Have fun with that. Anyway, if you wanna explain what’s up with Tom, I’d be happy to hear it,” he replied, also getting up and moving over to a different pile of folders.

Something about what he said made Catra’s ears prick up, and as she paused flicking through a drawer, she realised what it was. “What do you mean, ‘if’?” she asked behind her.

From the corner of her eye, she saw Bow stop as well. “You’ve gone back to work, so I didn’t know if you’re still planning on explaining it later. It’s cool if you don’t want to though, if it’s private or whatever.”

“No, I’m gonna explain it to you!” she replied, noticing that she was getting defensive and trying to curb that instinct before it had a chance to take over. “You told me a secret, so I need to tell you one to make it even. That’s how it works. I’m just looking for the file I need to demonstrate.”

Bow gave another one of his little disarming shrugs and said, “Really, I don’t mind. Maybe that’s how it worked in the Horde, but here we just… trust each other with secrets. I didn’t demand Glimmer to tell me something embarrassing in exchange for those photos, either. I know she wouldn’t share that with anyone unless she knew I was comfy with it.”

Catra tried to protest, but he moved towards her and placed his hands gently over hers. “So. Do you want to tell me who Tom is?”

“Yes,” she said firmly, “I’m not a pussy.”

Bow squeezed her hands gently and said, “No, it doesn’t make you weak or a coward to not want to share this with me. This is clearly difficult for you, I know everything from back then is. If you’re gonna tell me, I don’t want it to be because you think you have to or to prove you’re not scared or anything like that. I want it to be because _you_ want to include me in a little bit of your life, just like I want to include you in mine.”

God, how was he so good at making you feel welcome? she thought to herself with only the tiniest amount of malice. It was nice, she realised, and it made her want to share it with him – genuinely, honestly _want_.

“Okay,” she said at last, “come with me.”

She led him to Shadow Weaver’s desk, where she suspected Tom’s folder would be, and instructed him to help her look through it. He did, and they returned for a couple of minutes to their harmonious, mostly-silent work mode. Finally Bow broke the mostly-silence by crying, “Hey, I see Adora’s name! I think this is just a folder dedicated to her.”

While he began skimming through it, Catra said, “Good, that means mi- ahem, Tom’s – must be close.” Bow didn’t appear to notice the slip-up, but she supposed it wouldn’t really matter if he had.

Indeed, the file labelled ‘Thomas’ was only three down from Adora’s, and she was quickly able to call Bow away from looking at Adora’s baby photos and old training reports so she could show him what she needed to.

Well, easiest way to do this is probably with a photo, she thought, and flicked through until she found one. She directed Bow’s eyes to it with a jerk of her claw, and, as nonchalantly as she could sound, said, “That’s Tom.”

Bow looked puzzledly between her face and the photo – which appeared to have been taken around when she was fourteen, owing to the pimples on Kyle’s face in the background – and eventually said, “But that’s – that’s you, isn’t it?”

“Yes, unfortunately it is,” she replied, not being able to resist a smirk.

Understanding dawned on his face, and he stammered, “So that means you’re – you’re like, trans?” Her eyes flashed as she confirmed. “Gee, that must have been hard for you. Especially with a parental figure like Shadow Weaver.”

She felt a long, drawn-out, “Yup,” was appropriate to answer that.

“Have you talked to Perfuma about that? She, uh, knows a thing or two about this topic, and can probably help better than I could.”

“Wait, is she…?” Catra asked, and shrugged when Bow gave an affirmative nod. “Huh, I’d never realised.”

“What do those letters and numbers mean?” Bow asked, pointing out a line above the photo which read ‘THOMAS FZ R10-SW05’.

“It’s my identification tag, everyone has one in the Fright Zone,” Catra explained. “At least among the new recruits, I don’t know how much it gets used in the outposts further out. Or… got used, I guess. That’s still kinda hard to get used to,” she added with a soft chuckle.

“What does it all stand for?” Bow prompted.

“Oh, yeah, okay. So, FZ stands for Fright Zone, it marks me out as belonging to the Fright Zone Corps, which is mostly cadets intended for leadership positions, Force Captains and senior officers and shit. The R is for eighteen, because I was part of the eighteenth year after the recruitment program was set up, and 10 is my squadron number. There’s about twenty of them in each major base, I think.”

Seeing that her eyes were skirting away from the end of the line, Bow gently asked, “What about the last bit?”

Catra sighed, and said, “That’s… an unusual bit. Most people don’t have that. It’s for special wards of the Horde, people selected for higher training. I think Hordak had a couple back when I was a kid, to work on his portal research or whatever he was doing back then, and then – then, Shadow Weaver had her own. Adora was number four, and I was five. As in, the fifth cadet she chose.”

“Who were the first three?”

“Um, I don’t really know. Scorpia was one – FZ P6-SW03,” she recited automatically. “Cause of the Black Garnet, probably. But I never really asked about the first two.”

Bow was once again resorting to counting on his fingers, and when he appeared satisfied, he said, “So that makes her two years older than you?”

Reaching up and pushing further, near to the back of the drawer, Catra managed to find Scorpia’s folder, and laid it out next to hers and Adora’s. “A year and a half,” she corrected without looking at Bow.

“What about Adora, was she in your year?”

“Mhm. FZ R10, same as me. She’s ten months older, though. She found me in a box that someone brought back after a raid and begged to keep me when she was, like… three? I was two and a few months, we’re pretty sure, so they retroactively put me in the R cohort.”

“Wait,” Bow said, putting his hand up to pause. “You mean you don’t even know how old you are?”

This time it was Catra’s turn to shrug. “Hordak did some sort of blood test on me to figure it out, I trust his judgment.” After a pause, she amended, “On science, at least. Not with, like, military strategy or politics or really any of the things a genocidal dictator is usually known for.”

“Anyway,” Bow said, rubbing his neck. “Is it bad if I say that boy-you was kinda attractive?”

Catra’s nose scrunched up in disgust and she snatched the folder away. “Yes, very. I’m not letting you read this if you’re gonna perv over fourteen-year-old me,” she said, putting on a fake angry face.

Bow put his hands up and said, “Whoa, sorry,” but his tone suggested that he was taking it as just as much of a joke as Catra, and she relaxed. “Anything interesting in the rest of that file, anyway?”

“Not really,” she replied. “Mostly just stuff I wish I could get rid of, to be honest.”

“Well, why don’t you? Here, I have a lighter somewhere here – hold on, give me a second…” Bow said, fiddling with about fifty different pockets on his shirt until he finally pulled out a small stick of plastic that she recognised from seeing Sea Hawk on smoke breaks.

“How the hell do you have one of those?” Catra asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Mermista wanted it away from Sea Hawk so she gave it to me for safekeeping.”

Catra shrugged, deciding she wasn’t gonna get into that. “Whatever, I don’t care that much. Are we really gonna do this?”

“Do you want to?”

For the second time today, she realised that she could honestly say yes, she wanted to. She wanted this, and that was okay. “Give it here,” she said, and, after a few false starts, clicked it alight, set the folder aflame and watched the last of the Horde’s influence shiver and tremble and burn away once and for all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> apparently i'm keeping my tradition of a multi-chapter catra angst fic followed by an update a few days later where she finally gets the comfort half of the hurt comfort lol  
> i'm gonna try and make the next fic more of a fluffy oneshot, or possibly a catra&perfuma friendship/therapy fic (that is unless i get a good adora angst idea first)


End file.
